1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method for inputting a character, and particularly, to a method of inputting a character according to a tilt direction of an apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
As science and technology being rapidly developed, handheld electronic devices provide more and more functions to satisfy consumers' demands. A current typical handheld electronic device usually has basic functions including voice communication, short message service, and notepad, and some may even be further adapted for web browsing, and sending/receiving emails. The multiple functions bring conveniences to users, and such handheld electronic devices are also developed to be entertainment tools. In this manner, handheld electronic devices are considered as one kind of the most popular high-tech electronic products.
The foregoing functions require corresponding inputting interface for operation. Especially, when a handheld electronic device is operated for editing a telephone book, a short message, or an email, a great amount of characters are often needed to be inputted. However, such a handheld electronic device is usually slim and compact, and thus contains only a few keys which can be used for inputting the characters. For example, a handheld electronic device, such as a cell phone, or a personal digital assistant (PDA), can be inputted characters with keys, including numeral keys from 0 through 9, pound key, and star key, contained in a conventional keypad. In order to edit many characters, e.g., English characters or phonetic characters, these characters must be assigned to much less keys. In other words, each key of the keypad corresponds to more than one character. The characters can be respectively selected by pressing a single key for different times. This input mode is so called conventional multi-tap text input.
When operated in this mode, in order to input a character, a user first needs to locate a key corresponding to the character to be inputted, and then presses the key according to a position or an order of the character listed on the key. For example, as shown in FIG. 1, there is illustrated a conventional key pad. Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional key pad includes 12 keys, 101 through 112. When a user intends to input a character “y”, the user needs to press the key 109, which has four characters “w”, “x”, “y”, and “z” assigned thereto correspondingly in that order. The character “y” is the third one in the queue, and the user can input the character “y” by consecutively pressing the key 109 three times to switch the character from “w” to “x” and finally to “y”.
Further, for example, when a user intends to input a word “on” which contains two characters “o” and “n”, since both of the two characters “o” and “n” are assigned to the key 106, the user must press the key 106 three times to switch the character from “m” to “n” then to “o” for inputting the character “o”. The user then has to hold for a certain period, and then presses the key 106 two times to switch the character from “m” to “n”. According to the foregoing, inputting one or more characters by pressing the keys requires repetitively pressing, and when inputting different characters assigned to a same key, it even requires a waiting period between the inputs of the two characters. This is inconvenient for the user to input characters.